I have read the Nutyx howto on compiling your own kernel and actually did it following the instruction given.
The booting was, as expected, a bit shaky and the kernel not very functional ahah.
However, what I'm a bit confused (but also interested) about is the fact that there is no mention of mkinitramfs in the howto.
Is this on purpose?
I have noticed that there is no initramfs in Nutyx as I installed it from the ISO and the kernel boots fine.
I like the idea of building a custom kernel with all the drivers I use built in and no initrams.
Another, a bit unrelated, observation is that the bzimage I got after following the howto is 3.4 MB and, albeit smaller than the stock kernel, is still larger than my stock kernel on Debian, which is 3.0 MB.
I compared the .config file from the kernel compiled with the howto and the Debian config and my custom .config is smaller, so I don't know what I did wrong, since the custom kernel I supposed to be very small.
QuoteI like the idea of building a custom kernel with all the drivers I use built in and no initrams.
It's the all idea of the tuto
QuoteI got after following the howto is 3.4 MB
Yes if you want to reduce more, you will need to an initrd file
To make an initrd, in root:
cd /lib/modules
mkinitramfs <currentdirectory>
Hi Tnut,
thanks for your reply.
In which ways would initramfs contribute too reduce the size of the kernel?
Also, considering that a kernel is loaded in memory all the time, what are the tradeoff of having a smaller kernel, but an initramfs, versus having a bigger kernel, without an initramfs?
Excuse me if my questions are basic stuff, but all this is kinda new for me.